Masconomet baseball team set for North semis against Dracut or Danvers

Sunday

Jun 1, 2014 at 3:54 PMJun 1, 2014 at 3:54 PM

By Joshua Boydjboyd@wickedlocal.com

Wilmington High School varsity baseball had no answer for Will Twiss.Over a complete-game seven innings, Twiss sat down 11 batters via strikeout, gave up four hits and walked just one batter as Masco beat Wilmington, 4-0, in a Division 2 North quarterfinal match on May 31."Will was on today. He is a competitor and wanted the ball. He proved that he deserved it," said Masco head coach T.J. Baril.Twiss, of course, had plenty of help from the entire Masco lineup. On the defensive side, Elias Varinos made a heads-up play that avoided a tough situation."At the top of the sixth, with runners on first and second and one out, he fielded a slow ground ball between shortstop and third base," Baril recalled. "He had no chance at first, so he waited for the runner to round third, and then threw behind him to get the out. Instead of bases loaded with one out, we now had runners on first and second with two outs, and Twiss pitched out of the inning."Offensively, Masco scored three of its four runs in the second inning.Mike Manni led off with a single, Tom Budrewicz hit a RBI double, and Elias Varinos and Greg Dougherty both worked bases-loaded walks for a 3-0 score.In the sixth, Troy Bunker singled to score Chris Rich for what ended up being the final 4-0 score."It was a good team win. We were able to manufacture a few runs early and that allowed Will to do his thing," said Baril. "He commanded the strike zone and battled all day. The defense made some nice plays, and we were able to live to play another day."Dracut visits Danvers’ Twi Field on Sunday night at 7 p.m., and the second-seeded Masconomet (19-2) plays the winner of that game on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Lynn’s Fraser Field.No. 6 Dracut entered the Sunday game at 14-7 overall, while No. 3 Danvers is 15-5.